All eyes are on the FTC as it tries to get its Activision-Blizzard deal approved in its home country.
Now, the leaked document brings into focus Sony’s main argument, which is essentially: Microsoft can’t please trust us to keep Call of Duty on PlayStation because they don’t New Bethesda games like Starfield and Elder Scrolls VI will be made on the PlayStation.
We’re back to the Zenimax Bethesda deal, which keeps coming up in Sony’s arguments. Microsoft has repeatedly offered Sony a ten-year contract for Call of Duty, which PlayStation head Jim Ryan called “not enough.”
This is an old argument, but it shows that Sony is still trying to use it with the FTC. For the CMA in the UK, the content of the Call of Duty console was not actually the main factor in rejecting the deal, but cloud-based concerns were mentioned.
Microsoft has always believed that ” Starfield is a new series, both Starfield and The Elder Scrolls VI are single player games, so, unlike Call of Duty, they don’t have an online community on all platforms, including PlayStation’s massive gamer base . They say removing Call of Duty from PlayStation will not bring financial success.
But… that’s a weird argument. If the Bethesda acquisition had never happened, both StarCraft and The Elder Scrolls 6 would have been released on PlayStation and would have sold millions, if not tens of millions, on PlayStation. Microsoft did not say it made economic sense to keep these games on PlayStation , despite the fact that they believe that, instead, they’ll get more benefit from new and ongoing Game Pass subscribers who will get those games as part of the service on day one. There are no tens of millions of sales, probably because of this.
I do believe that Microsoft will not remove Call of Duty from PlayStation as they say. But their argument was essentially “Trust us” to which Sony responded “You took Starfield and The Elder Scrolls” to which Microsoft responded
That is “well, that’s different.” It usually looks weird on the Microsoft side. We’ll see if the FTC can make a convincing case that no one else in the world has actually done.
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